Why TV Needs Black People

TV is in big trouble.

Here are two facts that every television executive should have sleepless nights over:

1.       According to the last 2011 census Britain is becoming a more ethnically diverse country. London is 40% Non-white. Leicester, Luton and Slough are now “minority majority cities” (over 50% of the population are from a black, Asian or ethnic minority) and Birmingham is predicted to join them soon.

2.       Black, Asians and other ethnic minorities watch less television than their white counterparts. On average BAME people watch five hours less television per week (22hours vs. 27hours). The really worrying fact for people at the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five is BAME people watch only half the amount of Terrestrial TV than the rest of the population (8hours vs 16hours).

So there you have it TV execs; a segment of the audience that is growing that clearly doesn’t want to consume your product. If this were a business presentation I’d be thinking how do I sell my shares now?

But before I hand in my notice and open the ice cream shop in Brixton Village that I’ve been dreaming about for the last two years a small academic study by the University of California might hold the answer as to what TV execs can do.

During 2011-2012 the University of California’s analysed more than 1,000 “scripted television shows” – that’s drama and comedy to you and me – for how many people of colour appeared in them and the results were striking. The study found that programmes with more actors of colour had above average ratings.

The amount of actors of colour a TV programme had really mattered. The study found that average ratings were highest when the casts were 31 – 40% from an ethnically diverse background. At the other end of the spectrum, ratings were the lowest among shows with casts that were 10 percent ethnic minority or less.

And it wasn’t just “in front of the camera” stats that influenced the ratings, the colour of the staff behind the camera also mattered. The broadcast shows with the highest ratings all had writing staff where at least a fifth of the staff were BAME.

In a recent conversation with Keli Lee the Head of Casting at Disney ABC she told me that the diversity of cast is vital in attracting minority audiences. 15 years ago on screen ethnic diversity on the American network ABC stood at roughly 6%, today it is 27% with shows such as Modern Family, Greys Anatomy and Scandal.

The answer is simple for British TV executives worried about their falling ratings and a growing audience that is switching off:

Employ more black people behind the camera and put more of us in-front of the camera. And if you really want to save TV you might even want to make a few more .of us executives too

The Flight Of The Black Actor

Last week, as Chair of the Royal Television Society Diversity Committee, I organised a panel discussion on whether black British actors need to leave the UK in order to further their careers.

You can read the RTS report on the event here http://www.rts.org.uk/flight-black-actor-%E2%80%93-report-diversify-14-november-2013 (and it was filmed so that is to follow soon)

I thought people might like to read the briefing document I produced ahead of the panel with facts and figures about BAME actors BAME audiences.

Read, enjoy, weep and please feel free to use them randomly in your next discussion about BAME people in the media over a drink, a coffee, at work or a dinner party...

Briefing Document for Royal Television Society Panel on “The Flight Of The Black Actor”

Do black British actors need to leave the UK in order to have successful careers?

It’s a common enough idea with even the Shadow Business Secretary Chukka Umunna MP talking about it in a recent speech. Morgan Freeman has talked about how British actors need to go to America and even the new Director of the National Theatre Rufus Norris has spoken about it.

1. EXAMPLES OF BLACK FLIGHT:

Idris Elba

David Harewood

Troy Titus Adams

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

David Oyelowo

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Notable examples of black actors who have not gone to America:

Naomi Harris

Ashley Walters

And Lenny Henry

2. BRITAIN VERSUS AMERICA

i. Awards

Only three black British actors have won RTS best acting awards: 2009/10 David Oyelowo and Naomi Harris in Small Island and Diane Parish best female actor in Babyfather (interestingly that they were all examples of black subject matter – definitely not colour-blind casting.

BAFTA - No black actor has so far won a BAFTA for best actor (male or female)

EMMYs In last 30 years six BME actors have won best actor awards at the EMMYS

ii. Salary

No BME British actors make any top ten lists for most paid.

In America Sandra Oh of Korean decent makes the top ten paid actors list for her role in Greys Anatomy

iii. “Colour-blind” casting

When the BBC announced a present-day version of Sherlock Holmes they cast Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. When the Americans announced the US version, Elementary, Lucy Liu was cast as Dr Joan Watson – an Asian woman.

iv. ABC Disney has increased its BME on-screen representation form 6% fifteen years ago to 27% now. It’s stable of programmes include Modern Family, Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. Head of casting is Korean American Keli Lee.

3. STATISITICS

i. Audiences:

BME population is approximately 14% of the UK population

BME population of London is 40.3% (Particularly pertinent when thinking about about London based dramas)

ii. TV Audiences:

BME’s watch 5 hours less television a week than their white counterparts 22hours –vs- 27hours:

BME’s watch 8 hours less mainstream terrestrial TV a week than their white counterparts. 8 hours vs 16hours.

BME’s are deserting mainstream TV for digital TV. They watch 3 hours more Digital TV a week than their white counterparts. 14hours vs 11hours.

BME audiences watch less mainstream TV of every genre than their population percentages but in drama and comedy the difference is most marked.

For BBC1 Drama only 9.3% of their audience is made up of BME’s vs population percentage of 14%

For BBC1 Comedy only 5.8% of their audience is made up of BME’s vs population percentage of 14%

  

BIG STAT ALERT!! BME onscreen representation for EastEnders has the most racially diverse on-screen representation of any soap. Over a third (38%) of the white population watch EastEnders at some point in the year. But 50% of the BME population watch EastEnders!

Anecdotally ITV have increased their on-screen representation in both Corrie and Emmerdale over the last year. In January 2013 Corrie’s new producer Stuart Blackburn said increased on screen diversity was a top priority.  Last year 2012 introduced its first black family. And it has had no effect on their audiences. That can be seen as both positive and negative. It did not “scare-away” white viewers but so far it hasn’t grown the BME audience either.

The Price Of Diversity

There’s a cheap trick journalists can pull when they want to criticise a government policy. You simply divide the amount of money spent on a policy by the change it has made. Let me give you an example:

Take the amount of money the government has spent on a regeneration project that is meant to improve employment in an area and divide by the number of new jobs created in the area.

You can normally come up with a statistic that “shows” each job cost several hundreds of thousands of pounds!

I say it’s cheap journalism but it also plays an important function. It is vital for us to be able to assess if money is being spent wisely and whether government policies are actually achieving anything.

I was reminded of this just the other day when I was sitting on a panel discussion hosted by Thomson Reuters discussing the issue of how to increase the number of black, Asian and other ethnic minorities working in television specifically and the media generally. Before the event started all the panelists were sitting in the ”green room” and the chair person was picking our brains so he would know what to ask us when we were sitting in front of the audience. Two seemingly innocent questions of his struck me:

Question number 1: “Does mentoring actually work in helping black people get promotions?”

Question number 2: “Do the diversity schemes of different broadcasters schemes actually work?”

The questions were not confrontational - he was just trying to get some background information. But they were not properly answered and the conversation continued to flow, I doubt my fellow panelists would even remember them in the general discussion. When it actually came to the actual talk in front of the audience the two questions did not even come up.

But I left the event asking myself; What if a journalist performed that “cheap journalistic trick” on media diversity schemes?

What if a journalist looked at the different initiatives and money dedicated to increasing diversity in the media and divided it by the number of extra black people employed in the media?

A recent Creative SkillSet survey showed that while the number of people employed in the media industry has increased in the last three years the number of BAME employees (black, Asian and minority ethnic) has actually decreased.

With figures like those I  fear that if you did my cheap journalistic trick you could find every penny spent on diversity schemes actually cost jobs!

I can see the headline now: “For every £XXthousand spent on diversity the TV industry loses another black person”

Any intelligent person will realise that this is not a fair headline as we have no idea what the employment figures would be if there were no diversity initiatives - in all likelihood the figures would be even worse.

But it still leaves the important question of which initiatives actually work and are worth spending money on? Answering this type of question is now common practice when government’s assess their policies and is often called an “impact assessment”. For anyone interested in increasing diversity in the media finding an answer to this question should be our number one priority.

If mentoring works let’s role out mentoring everywhere, if mentoring doesn’t work let’s stop spending money on it and move on, the same goes for all the different initiatives we invariably role out. This is not an argument for not spending money on diversity programmes but let’s find out what is effective and focus our energies and money on that.

The Reuters event was a great success and I met some incredibly interesting people from the world of finance. But it was the two simple questions no one could answer that left the greatest impression on me.

How Do I Find A Husband? (And Other Important TV Diversity Questions)

“How on earth am I going to find a husband now Marcus?!”

I had been talking to a fellow BBC colleague for about an hour. We had talked around the subject, we had avoided the issue and cracked jokes to lessen the brutal reality. But after an hour there was no avoiding it and it finally came out as a question, a plea for help and resigned desperation - all in equal measure. She repeated it; “Seriously how am I going to find a husband?”

The black colleague had been relocated out of London, along with thousands of other BBC people in the last five years, as the Corporation has tried to more accurately reflect the UK it broadcasts to and the license payers who support it.  

First of all I completely support the BBC’s moves to be less London-centric and think the recent regional developments have strengthened the BBC’s connection to the wider population north of Watford no end, as well as improving its output. It would be perverse if I supported diversity in the media on one hand and didn’t support increasing regional diversity and representation on the other.

However that does not mean that I don’t think there are very real challenges that the BBC and every broadcaster face who wants to be less London-centric.

According to the 2011 census a staggering 70% of black British people live in Greater London. If the borough of Barnet were a city it would have the fourth largest number of black people after London, Birmingham and Manchester. Yes you read that right Barnet! I’m not even going to discuss the usual suspects of Lambeth, Lewisham and Brent.

The wider issue my black colleague’s lament - about a potential husband - points to is the fact that she was moving to a part of the UK where she felt she could not relate to the community in the same way nor are the same community support structures in place for her to deal with problems outside work and achieve a proper work / life balance. All of these are essential if she is going to reach her full potential in her career. (This is without even going into whether she should be limiting her search for a potential partner to black suitors).

The challenge to broadcasters is to make sure that they do not champion one diversity goal (in this case regional diversity) at the potential expense of other diversity targets (BAME representation).

And so with this in mind I would offer the following advice to any broadcaster or media company who is quite rightly trying to make their output and staffing practices less London-centric. I call it the “The Three R’s”

1.  Recognise that you are moving from a part of the country with a large concentration of black people to one that is less concentrated. Acknowledging the issue is the first step in addressing it.

2.  Redouble your efforts to increase BAME diversity in front of and behind the camera. If you continue with the same policies all things being equal BAME diversity will decrease.

3.  Remedy the problems that existing BAME staff will experience when relocating that might be different from their white colleagues. This can be the most difficult one to solve but simple measures such as making them aware of organisations such as the TVCollective so they can find virtual support from black colleagues at the other end of the country can go a long way.

I was part of the first wave of relocations out of London over five years ago moving to Scotland to be Editor of the BBC’s Current Affairs Programmes. It was a promotion for me and career-wise it was one I embraced with open arms. I’ve been very lucky finding a great team to work with and a supportive wife who moved up with me. But if we want to increase the number of BAME people working in television and ensure the careers of those already working in television really flourish we need to rely on more than just luck.

My fear is eventually if the choice is between a career and finding a husband (or being connected to a supportive community) most BAME people will make the “right choice” and leave the media industry - after all “it is only television.”